Review on 📶 D-Link DWL-1000AP 11Mb Wireless LAN Access Point 802.11b: High-Performance Connectivity for Seamless Wireless Networking by Chris Anderson

This is a fully revised review. I have changed my rating from 5 to 2 stars. DLink was my first wireless access point (first wireless network experience) and I seem to have confused quick start with long-term reliability. As I thought it would be easier to have the same provider for AccessPoint and PCCARD, I was completely wrong. AccessPoint ships with a "BIOS" that does not support WEP128, but an update is available. After trying 3-4 times to install the update, it finally happened, but it caused the web control to go wrong - invalid HTML, missing buttons, etc. I couldn't control basic things like the wireless device name. Second, WEP doesn't support tokens, so you have to enter all 32 bytes in HEX on both sides. Not easy. In short, even with a bios change, 128 encryption never worked for me, standard 64 worked fine. Next - The access point software does not let you see which MAC addresses are connected or if there are other access points nearby. This was a big setback because as I found out when I finally smashed DLink and got Linksys instead, my neighbor had another access point which was causing me a lot of trouble. In general, despite the fact that I had a full (100%) connection, the link can break. I had to update every now and then, which completely hid my work (lost database connections, connections to X server, SSH recovery took a long time). Sometimes I had to update 5 times an hour. In addition, the connection speed has not been 11 Mbit / s for a long time. It will fluctuate at first and eventually go from 1 to 2 Mbit / s before finally stopping the data transfer, and this at a channel signal between 90 and 100%. When I finally replaced both PCCARD and AP with Linksys, all my wireless worries and annoyances were gone. Despite being a faster model (G) than my old Dlink, it now consistently maintains connections at at least 48Mbps. Big difference - I no longer lose connection. It also helped that I can now see other access points so I can set them up to avoid conflicts. I can log in using the Linksys hotspot, WEP128 works straight away, the website runs without errors. I have even more security control over who and where runs this hotspot - and if I ever want the hotspot to be part of a larger network, there are options to let it know its neighbors so it works like a large virtual network. DLINK still has a long way to go to even come close to matching all of these great features. I would recommend Linksys to anyone starting out with wireless networking. Don't repeat what I did just to save a few bucks.